


out of the cradle endlessly rocking

by halfpenny



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-15
Updated: 2008-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:07:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfpenny/pseuds/halfpenny





	out of the cradle endlessly rocking

 

 

_ The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; _

_ I cannot quite make it out. _

- _Annie Dillard_

They learn from the frigate’s skipper that the Island is truly in the middle of nowhere. They’re a four-day trip out from Taiwan, and that’s the closest available port the navigator can find with his thirty-year old charts. When Sawyer asks him about the decrepit maps, the man shrugs his slight shoulders and states in broken English that the shipping lanes he sails haven’t changed since the last World War, so why bother? Sawyer can’t really argue with that logic, and keeps his eyes firmly on the horizon as the Island and the Dharma Initiative and the beach drops away from sight.

Everyone gets seasick. Not just regular queasiness, but serious, painful motion sickness. Even the Others who claimed to have sailed every day on patrols around the Island in tin-can submarines and rickety dingys spend half their time hunched over a guardrail. Jack gets hit the worst and Sawyer might get some kind of pleasure out of that, but Kate spends what little time she isn’t being sick tending the doc, and can’t be bothered to give Sawyer the time of day. And there’s no pleasure to be had in that, don’t matter how you look at it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Sawyer were sick himself. But he’s not. He’s never told anyone this, but he had some pretty bad motion sickness as a kid. It was years before he could ride in a car without feeling nauseous. Yet while everyone around him was paying homage to the porcelain gods, Sawyer felt right as rain.

As he is alone in among the remaining survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 his ability to stand upright more than five minutes together, Sawyer finds himself with a lot of free time on his hands. He spends it liberally, watching the broad stretches of flat-line ocean sail past, fetching baby supplies for Aaron and his momma, even doing odd jobs on deck. Sawyer is just as surprised as anyone else at his natural born talent for untying the worst knots snarled in the trawling nets. After a long evening of loosening knots, the crew and Sawyer sip flat, warm beer in silence and listen to the sleepy _ding-ding_ of the fog bell and the sounds of three-dozen passengers throwing up. It’s one of the best evenings Sawyer can bring to mind and he’s had himself a good time by and large.

On the second day, he runs into Juliet. He expects her to be green around the gills, her serene face sweaty and pale like the rest of them, but she’s in the pink of health, his little Ice Queen, staring back at him with big blue eyes. Sawyer never liked blue eyes on a woman. Damn creepy. “Well,” he says, letting his eyes slide up and over Juliet in an obvious leer. “If it ain’t the witchdoctor herself. Figured you’d be topside, revisiting your breakfast, with all your Dharma friends.”

Juliet shrugs, calm and indifferent, and Sawyer is forcibly reminded of the first time he saw her on his ill-fated break for freedom. She just appeared out of the jungle’s wall of green, blonde and pink and cool as an ice cream cone. For a second, he’d thought she was some kind of vision, an angel come with tidings of salvation. Then she Tased him. His last thought was that flaming sword packed a hell of a punch.

“I don’t really understand it,” she says and she sounds so genuinely confused, Sawyer is tempted to believe her. “Ben can’t even get to his feet, but I’m fine.”

“That makes two of us, Duchess.” Juliet looks startled and a little uneasy and it’s the best feeling Sawyer’s had in months. She leaves in a huff and Sawyer falls asleep with a smile on his face that night.

The third day, the silence finally gets to Sawyer around midmorning and he seeks Juliet out. She’s on deck, her hair flying in the open wind. He leans on the rail next to her and closes his eyes. The salt tang of the sea is stronger today and it makes Sawyer feel clean, a somewhat novel experience. Without any prompting from him, Juliet begins to talk. She talks about her sister from Miami and her nephew Julian. She talks about her ex-husband and a freak bus accident, which makes Sawyer laugh with surprise and then feel like a jerk until Juliet starts laughing too. She talks about college and meeting Ben and Tasing him (she remembers that his shirt was torn and that’s important to Sawyer for reasons he’d prefer not to examine).

It’s the polar bears that do it for him. She’s explaining how exactly Arctic animals came to be in the South Pacific and Sawyer kisses her, quick and dry on the mouth, right on deck in front of the skipper and crew and God and everybody. She just blinks at him while the sailors hoot and catcall, but that night before he goes to bed, she corners him in the bathroom. This time, she kisses back.

The second Sawyer sets foot on dry land, his stomach revolts. He spends his first week ashore hunched over a tiny, Taiwanese toilet. He has a damn sight more sympathy for Jack after that, not that he’ll ever tell. Between bouts of nausea, he manages to stagger down the hall to call on Kate. Unfortunately, Shortcake gave him a bum room number and an ashen-faced Juliet answers the door instead. She’s clutching a bottle of Dramamine and the whole room smells like sick. He leans against her door jam and shakes his head. “You and me, angel,” he says as he tucks a limp strand of hair behind Juliet’s ear. “You and me are some kind of pair.”

The skipper only nods when Sawyer carries his and Juliet's bags up the gangway the next morning. The sickness stops the minute they cast off. After all, Sawyer thinks as he wraps an arm around Juliet’s waist and stares out at the open sea. All that dry land don’t mean a thing. In the end, it’s just another island.

 


End file.
